Marc Leyral

Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture de Paris La Villette · Department of Architecture

The growing of natural fibres-such as wicker-is deeply virtuous: it helps to diversify the forest cover, it requires limited inputs-even in water, little maintenance, and its CO 2 emissions are minimal. Their uses in basketry date back to the Neolithic period, and even probably before. People around the world have employed braiding technics and bas...

An elastic gridshell is an efficient constructive typology: a flat elastic grid is built before buckling it into shape. Then, the structure is stiffened. Its design and structural analysis involve a stage of form finding that can be done with a physical model or with a numerical model calculated in large deflections. The question is: are the predic...

The first traces of basketry date back to the Sumerian's period (4000 years BC). From now on, these braiding techniques have been used to craft vernacular shelters, clothes, furniture and tools. However, they are uncommonly used in architecture and are generally limited to non-structural filling elements. To our knowledge, the Baya project develope...

Featured Application: This study focuses on the evaluation of the critical buckling load for elastic gridshells by testing scale models or using dynamic relaxation. After discussing the differences between numerical and physical results at various scales, the study proposes to evaluate the resistance of certain gridshell typologies that cannot be...

Faire Tenir / Structure & Architecture est un ouvrage didactique sur les structures qui "font tenir" l'architecture. Ne requérant aucune connaissance préalable outre les quatre opérations arithmétiques de base, cet ouvrage vise justement à instruire n’importe quel lecteur sur les principes simples qui sous-tendent les structures les plus complexes....

Through the study of the Baya's weaverbird nest, we carried out our research on the braided hanging shells. It is a new experimental structure that is effective in terms of low use of materials. We developed a parametrical dynamic relaxion solution to calculate principal fields of stress on every type of the hanging shell project. Thanks to experim...

An elastic gridshell is an experimental structural typology truly effective in terms of material consumption by span ratio. Because classical beam theory is not valid for large deflections, the form-finding, the dimensioning and the optimization of elastic gridshells are usually done with dynamic relaxation method. The apparent complexity of this m...

Les assemblages des structures en bambou font généralement recours à divers matériaux (ficelle, acier, béton, etc.), souvent positionnés à l’extérieur des bambous. Leur impact visuel interroge la pertinence de l’utilisation de solutions techniques sophistiquées pour les structures en bambou. Notre étude s’inscrit dans la continuité – purement théo...